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Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.

Jonathan Swift

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Jonathan Swift
Age: 77 †
Born: 1667
Born: November 30
Died: 1745
Died: October 19
Essayist
Human Rights Activist
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Pamphleteer
Philosopher
Poet
Priest
Prosaist
Public Figure
Dublin city
Isaac Bickerstaff
M. B. Drapier
Lemuel Gulliver
Simon Wagstaff
Performance
Simplicity
Performances
Perfection
Style
Human
Humans
Without
Arrive

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All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy.
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Hereditary right should be kept sacred, not from any inalienable right in a particular family, but to avoid the consequences that usually attend the ambition of competitors.
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There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.
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It is likewise to be observed that this society hath a peculiar chant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply.
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I've often wish'd that I had clear, For life, six hundred pounds a year A handsome house to lodge a friend A river at my garden's end A terrace walk, and half a rood Of land set out to plant a wood.
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Praise is the daughter of present power.
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She has more goodness in her little finger than he has in his whole body.
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You must take the will for the deed.
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The lack of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.
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Careful observers may foretell the hour (By sure prognostics) when to dread a show'r. While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more.
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Satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any.
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Do you think I was born in a wood to be afraid of an owl?
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The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.
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No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
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There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.
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Everybody wants to live forever, but nobody wants to grow old.
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So, naturalists observe, a flea Hath smaller fleas that on him prey And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum.
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A jargon form'd from the lost language, wit, Confounded in that Babel of the pit Form'd by diseased conceptions, weak and wild, Sick lust of souls, and an abortive child Born between whores and fops, by lewd compacts, Before the play, or else between the acts Nor wonder, if from such polluted minds Should spring such short and transitory kinds.
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Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.
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Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.
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